


The Tale of the Cobbler and the Tailor's Son

by neifile7



Series: Landfall [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Afterglow, Aliens Made Them Do It, Angsty Schmoop, Dubious Consent, Light Bondage, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution, Mentions of Underage Sex, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:51:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neifile7/pseuds/neifile7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is talkative in bed; Ianto tries to figure out what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of the Cobbler and the Tailor's Son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [51stCenturyFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/gifts).



> The title refers to the concluding tale of the Thousand and One Nights (Ma’aruf the Cobbler). The protagonist makes impossible journeys, acquires a magical ring, gets into financial, marital and political trouble, and has a lot of sex with a lot of people. Sound like anyone we know?
> 
> Beta by 51stCenturyFox and andreth47. First published on LJ on 2/23/09; this version has been slightly revised and de-jossed.

I.

Ianto had been mildly surprised, at first, to learn how much Jack enjoys the afterglow.

 

Part of it, he knows, is Jack’s pure effrontery.  After all, the man has an _unfairly_ short refractory period and a mind-blowing stash of tricks for bringing his partners back up to speed.  He bloody well knows how satisfying he is, and cheerfully assumes that anyone he beds will want to linger for seconds and thirds or for however long he sticks around himself.

 

In the early days, Ianto had barely noticed, what with his heart still buried in the sub-basement and the rest of him – barring these stolen moments – little better than a reanimated corpse.  He’d twisted himself into such a state of shame and want and denial that, once they’d gotten each other off, he’d make as hasty an exit as dignity permitted.  That all changed on a memorable night that began with a stopwatch and a dead colleague and ended with them glued together, all kisses and come and tangled legs in a too-small bunk.

 

He’d begun, that night, to realize how much Jack appreciates the presence of another body close by – sometimes as rudder, sometimes as anchor. And he’d had an even bigger surprise: how much Jack _talks_ in the afterglow.

 

(Oh, he talks constantly during sex, too, all too often with his mouth full one way or another, and Ianto’s made it his business and pride to learn how to _shut him up,_ or at least reduce the flow to monosyllables.  Very loud ones.)

 

Jack asks him questions sometimes in the lazy in-betweens and afters; once he puts his mind to it, he’s pretty good at coaxing out a story. Ianto’s long lost the habit of speaking about himself, and so the answers are halting at first, clumsy. He sticks to matters of taste: books and films, clothing, a few fragments of his London adventuring. As he gains fluency, he embroiders a bit, because that’s a long habit too.

 

It’s nothing, though, next to the tales that Jack likes to spin.

 

Now and then, the interval between orgasms opens up a small space where Jack can revisit the vaster regions of his memory. Certain topics remain off limits, of course, between timeline issues and Jack’s native secrecy, and Ianto isn’t sure how much to believe of the rest.  Jack, he thinks, is his private Scheherazade:  exotic and fabulous in every way, looping sex and tall tales together night by night.  None of it adds up to a single story, although in the time-suspending haze of sated well-being, the gaps matter less than they do in daylight.

 

Of course, most of the stories also _involve_ sex in some form.  Jack has plainly never gotten the memo on twenty-first century bediquette (Rule No. 1a: don’t talk about past lovers in bed; it may give your partner The Wrong Idea).  Ianto would probably find this creepy and off-putting in anyone else.  He would also find it odd that the storyteller would touch him constantly throughout the recital.  It’s always clear when Jack’s gearing up for another round; but there’s something different about how his hands move restlessly over Ianto as he speaks –  almost mapping him, memorizing him, massaging the words into his skin.

 

The touching is his first clue that Jack’s stories may not be all that they seem.

 

\----------

“You first time was a _threesome_?”

 

Somehow, the subject of losing one’s virginity has come up, and Ianto has made some offhand comment about the how the momentousness of the occasion seems to get lost in the banality of the actual sex, or vice versa.  Jack first seems inclined to argue the definition of virginity a bit (and perhaps indulge in a hands-on demonstration), but the “banality” remark sidetracks him. He settles a bit against Ianto’s side, picks up his wrist and chafes it idly.

 

“Sure.  Normal procedure where I grew up.  Not a big initiation thing, mind you, just that, well, you’d get to a certain age and your families would see that you could use a little experience, so they’d hook you up with an older couple who weren’t averse to a little variety.  It was great, really.  You’d get to watch, and then you’d join in.  They’d show you stuff, you’d figure a lot of things out without all that _banal_ fumbling around.”

 

“That’s…rather more enlightened that I can imagine, I have to say.” Ianto says, faintly distracted by Jack running a thumb over his knuckles; for some reason, the gesture seems too tender, too out of keeping with what Jack’s describing so matter-of-factly.

 

“Yeah, well, it makes sense.  Why leave something that important to chance?”

 

“Put that way, I suppose it does make sense.  I’m assuming, though, that you wouldn’t get all that…instruction in one go?”

 

“That depended.  Two or three times were pretty normal, sometimes a little longer.  They still believed in finding stuff out for yourself, see, not getting set in what your first partners would do.  Just moving you along to a point where you weren’t flying blind.  My couple were great because they were so flexible.  Old family friends, had been doing it for years, never more than one boy or girl at a time, but they knew their stuff.”

 

“Umm.  Do I really want to ask you what you mean by that?”

Jack grins, runs his palm over Ianto’s forearm.  “Oh, just basic comparative anatomy.  Foreskin vs. labia.  Prostate vs. G-spot.  Paying attention, really.”

 

Ianto shakes his head.  “Well, the idea of sexual initiation at the hands of any of my parents’ friends is really a bit much for me to get my head around.  I mean, how old were you, anyway?  And what was it like to be around them afterwards?”

 

Jack’s pause, and the stilled fingers on his arm, tell him that he’s pushing the limit here.  “I was just shy of sixteen,” he says at length.  “Usually, we’d do it a bit later, but…see, I was about to go off with a raiding party.  Old enough to fight is old enough to fuck and all that. So we did it one of the last times I was at home, if you can call the transit camp home.  And later, I was recruited to… go somewhere else.  So I didn’t actually see them again.”

 

Dangerous shoals here, Ianto thinks; best steer back into open water.  “So tell me.  Did they teach you how to do that, um, that thing with your tongue?”

 

Jack rolls over and all but purrs at him, “And what _thing_ would that be, Ianto Jones? Last I checked, I had _plenty_ of good tongue moves.”

 

“You know bloody well.  Where you, uh, curl it at that angle.  I swear, I don’t understand how that’s anatomically possible.”

 

With practiced fluidity, Jack flips him over and spreads his cheeks.  “That,” he murmurs against his back, “came courtesy of a coloratura. Performed for the troops in the Beta Pavonis system and took her pick of the cadets. The limbering exercises she taught me still come in pretty handy.  You like that one, do you?”

 

“You know I do.  _Bastard_ ,” Ianto pants.  “Oh, god.”

 

\------------

_Always did have a taste for threesomes, early experiences and all that.  You remember that story._

 

_But I have to say, the best threesome I ever had? Never got naked with them, not once._

 

_They saved my life, which I didn’t deserve at the time.  And later they went off without me, which I didn’t deserve either.  But in between, it was the best time I’ve ever had with two people I wasn’t fucking._

 

_So many planets, so many tight corners.  Lots of running.  Dancing and joking.  Tinkering with the most beautiful ship I’ll ever see.  Getting to save a couple of worlds, even, before it all went to shit._

 

_He was older.  A_ lot _older, although you wouldn’t notice at first.  Funny-looking but hot, very fit, reflexes you wouldn’t believe and a brain to match.  She was just a kid, cute blonde with a pert, pert bottom, feet on the ground and her head in the stars.  Huge heart, much too big for the time and place she was born into.  Life would have been a pretty big letdown for her if he hadn’t come along. He made her extraordinary._

 

_And you could say they both made me who I am.  One way and another._

 

_It fucked me up pretty badly when it ended.  But I’ll always love those two.  Always._

\-----------

 

II.

 

They’re having a rare afternoon together in the archives, during a Rift lull while Tosh is off-duty and the others are catching up on paperwork.  Jack and Ianto don’t usually fool around much during these sessions, despite the eyerolls and sniggering that tend to accompany their exit downstairs.  For one thing, they’re pretty much keeping up with each other nonstop when they’re off the clock, and for another, Ianto always has a backlog of uncatalogued items that really do require Jack’s expert input.

 

Today there’s a box of what seems to be human jewelry, strange pendicles and bracelets in enamels, and a collar studded with pale blue stones.  Jack picks this up with care and looks at it intently, before smiling a little wryly.

 

“Slave jewelry,” he says.  “Even a millennium from now, a collar means ownership.  But this one has some special properties.  Remember the pheromone spray that Owen pinched?”  He lifts the collar and hooks it securely around his neck, grinning with a familiar wickedness.

 

It looks…ludicrous, Ianto thinks, but also strangely compelling, a flickering band reflecting the shine in Jack’s eyes.  And that’s his last coherent thought before a wave of olfactory sensation crashes through him.  It’s as if Jack’s always-heady scent has been run through an amplifier.  He smells musk and hair and sweat -- and he would swear distinct traces of himself, despite the fact that they had both showered after sex this morning --  and then he’s flushing all over and feeling the flare of arousal in nerve endings he didn’t know he had.  He reaches for Jack before he can stop himself, and Jack quickly raises his arm and taps the code on his wristband that will shut off the CCTV.

 

“This can get intense,” he warns, as Ianto sinks down to cup him urgently and undo his fly.  “Go easy, now.  I’ll explain later.”

\--------

 

They’ve wrapped and bagged the collar and transferred it to secure archives, and while the rest of the jewelry seems inert, Jack has left it on Tosh’s desk, requesting scans for traces of the pheromonal implants.  Jack had taken off the collar quickly after their frantic tryst, but the heightened smell lingers, and Ianto can see both Gwen and Owen fidgeting a bit before Jack packs them off home.  He’s not much better off himself.  He’s been half hard since they left the archives, and the only question is whether he’ll jump Jack at the coffee station or wait long enough to fold him over the desk.

 

In the event, Jack puts up an (even more) arousing show of resistance in his office, and manages to wrestle him down into the cubby and get his own trousers off before Ianto pulls him to the bed.  He’s shaking all over in a way that he hasn’t for months, and he absolutely wants to crawl inside Jack’s skin, and he can’t get him open quickly enough, and he truly can’t think, can’t stop, can’t slow his pace down from all, out, pistoning --

 

Afterwards, Ianto continues to quake for a long while, and pulling out of Jack brings on a violent bout of shivering.  “I’m sorry,” he gasps.  “That wasn’t  -- wasn’t how I meant that to go.  Jesus, why am I so fucked up?  What was that thing, Jack?”

 

Jack stretches a little, rolls on his back.  He looks sated and complacent, which under the circumstances is a little unnerving.  “I told you.  Slave collar, implanted with pheromone activators to tap directly into the amygdala.  Plus a kick to the gonads and adrenals to get you off as quickly as possible.  Listen, don’t worry about it, I invited it.  You didn’t hear me yelling any safewords, right?  I know that the sex tends to get rough. The collar was created for specific tastes; they’re coded in the stones.”

 

“Bloody hell.  Not the first time you’ve shown me human ingenuity at its most fiendish.”  Jack, hearing the shake in his voice, looks at him properly, then takes hold of his shoulders, circling with his thumbs until the trembling and chill have started to subside a bit.

 

“Fiendish is a good word,” he says.  “Those things will be used in human sexual trafficking about 900 years from now.  One of the uglier aspects of early space colonization.   Almost certainly designed for specialized brothel use, given the pop-off factor – get the client off quickly, move the wearer on to the next one.”

 

“Oh, my god,” Ianto whispers.  “Jack – how do you know?”  Fuck timelines, he thinks; the thought of Jack wearing a collar like that in any version of the future makes him nauseous.

 

Jack hesitates, plainly running over the consequences of disclosure while scanning Ianto’s face.  He appears to come to a decision.  “Okay.  Once, I was in a party that intercepted a smuggling ship.  They had about a hundred men and women on board, all bound for one of the more brutal outposts, all with packages of jewelry like the one we found.  Most of them had been tricked or abducted, but there were a few who’d more or less signed on willingly, and even after hearing about what they were getting into, they chose to go on.  Nothing but starvation or worse where they came from.”  Jack sighs.  “Eventually, it gets better out there, but we don’t leave human misery behind when we first reach space.”

 

“Why the hell did you put it on?”  Ianto mutters. 

 

“I thought you would enjoy it.  I’m sorry,” and Jack really does look chastened.  “I guess…at some level it was a way of redeeming it.  Getting rid of its connotations.  I don’t know, Ianto, I wasn’t thinking, except that – that I don’t believe that you and I can do much together that would be wrong, and I assume that you can handle stuff, but yeah, I should have warned you first.”

 

“Okay,” Ianto murmurs, only partly mollified.  “Okay.  Just -- don’t you _ever_ slip me a space roofie again.”

 

_\------------_  

_Paying for sex? Not really my style. Well.  Bartering is more like it._

 

_Met Morrie in a Cardiff mews one rainy night in 1870.  Rentboy, skinny little thing with big eyes and a gorgeous mouth. A cheeky mouth, too. He tried to roll me, not that that would have gotten him anything, so I rolled_ him _over for a good old-fashioned handy, and he decided I was all right.  We had a little mutual aid thing going for a bit.  He helped me with the ins and outs of Cardiff’s seamy side, and I taught him a few tricks he could charge extra for.  Amazing how far just a little kink goes when there are laws on the books about what you can do to your lawfully wedded spouse._

 

_He was one of the smart ones.  Got out of the game as soon as he could, set himself up with a little tobacconist’s shop.  Used to keep an eye out for him, and he’d pass along tidbits I could use. A great guy in a pinch, too, if I was on the run and needed to lie low somewhere. Wish I could have done more for him, in the end.  Damn shame there wasn’t a cure for syphilis in those days._

\-----------

III.

 

The Great White Space Whale is burnt flesh, Gwen’s thrown her tantrum, and Jack’s retreated to his office to lick his wounds.  Ianto knows enough to allow him some privacy, but he’s not about to leave him to sulk all night.  And like the others, he needs time himself to assimilate what has happened.  It’s always been bloody unfair, the extent to which Jack lets Gwen get away with breaking the rules.  Not that Ianto would trade places -- he knows it’s less about her than she might think.  Jack has a long history of Torchwood-inflicted damage to rectify; Gwen happens to be the team member who consistently, even deliberately, pushes those buttons.

 

He’s angry with Gwen on the team’s account –  dammit, she knows better than to fling her couple privilege in their faces; how could she snub Tosh and Owen like that? Or trivialize whatever it is that he and Jack have?  But he’s even angrier on Jack’s behalf, after the day they’ve had.  She shouldn’t have pushed him into a corner today of all days. Because over and beyond the cock-up of Rhys’ involvement and shooting, it’s plain to him that the space whale hit Jack hard in some way, and he’d have expected Gwen of all people to show a little understanding.  That’s supposed to be her job.

 

Well, his own job, at the moment, is to make Jack the best cup of coffee that he can, taking his time to get it right; and then go deal with what can be dealt with, by any means he has to hand.  And get Jack’s head out of his arse, even if he has to kick it loose.

 

Jack isn’t looking at the CCTV any more, that’s a good start; but from the idle way he’s pushing paper on his desk, it’s clear that he hasn’t begun his report, either.  He doesn’t avoid looking at Ianto, though, and he doesn’t plaster on his fake smile.  No evasions, then.  Good.

 

“I suppose you’re all pretty pissed off at me for that,” he says without preamble.

 

“Yep, I’d say so.  However, I think we’ll survive. And Gwen will probably apologise, at least for being an arse to the others.” Ianto smoothly sets down the coffee cup and perches on the edge of the desk.  “I’m afraid it _has_ rather overshadowed the more important issues of the day, though.”

 

Jack looks a little distraught at that.  “What’s more important than keeping the team together?  I should never have let it get to that point.  I should have refused Rhys’ offer.”

 

“Jack.  You’re forgetting what this was all in aid of.  You were prepared to hang on to that creature until we could pull off some kind of miracle rescue.  That surprised everyone, but I’m probably the only one who knew just what resources it would have taken.  You don’t do quixotic things like that without a bloody good reason.”

 

He waits.  Jack – ah, bless him, Jack doesn’t look away.  Better still.

 

“Torchwood hasn’t tended to be about choices,” Jack says finally.  “You must have seen plenty of it yourself.  If it’s alien, imprison it, exploit it, kill it – that was all we did, for over a hundred years.  Didn’t always do that much to make the earth safer.  You know that, too.  And here in Cardiff, especially – well, a lot ends up here by accident, no choice about where to go or how to survive.  I know more about that than I want to remember.  I’m tired of slapping everything in chains.  Or shunting it out to Flat Holm.  If we have a better option, we should take it.”

 

Ianto lets that sink in for a long moment, assessing the possible double meanings.  “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out this time, Jack,” he says quietly.  “It wasn’t our finest hour as a team, was it?  Well, not mine, at any rate.  I got Rhys taken hostage.”

 

Jack slides the chair over so that Ianto is between his legs.  “Are you kidding?  You were amazing.  You got free.  You kept those bastards from getting away.”  He reaches up and fiddles with Ianto’s tie, grins.  “Wish I’d seen that, you stunning them.  No, I knew you could handle yourself.  It was Gwen I couldn’t trust.  But that’s my fault, for putting her in that position.  I knew just how vulnerable it would make her.”

 

“You offered to let her stand down.  If she hadn’t been so stubborn – if she’d been using good judgment – she wouldn’t have come along.”  Ianto pauses.  “Love makes us vulnerable, you said.”

 

“No,” Jack says softly.  “Love makes _Gwen_ vulnerable.  Because of who she is, and because of how and why she needs Rhys.”  He runs one hand along Ianto’s jaw, thumbs his lower lip.  “Did I mention just how hot it was to watch you take that guy on?  Guess all that practice getting out of my knots came in handy, huh?”

 

Ianto lets his tongue snake out over the ball of Jack’s thumb, brings up his own hands to cup his face.  They kiss, luxuriously, hot pressure of lips, tongues rolling over teeth and palate.  “Mmmm,”  Ianto murmurs against his cheek after they break apart.  “I haven’t had much practice recently, though.  You’ve seemed – a little off those sorts of games.”

 

He feels Jack go still.

 

And abruptly, in a mental operation as automatic as adding two and two, he connects the dots.

 

“Jack,’ he whispers.  “ _Jack._   Was that – was that why?  The creature?  Seeing it bound and tortured like that – what happened, what did you remember?”

 

Jack turns his head away.  His hands close hard over Ianto’s forearms, but otherwise he doesn’t move.  Ianto can feel the effort that goes into that stillness.  Finally, “Take me to bed,” Jack says hoarsely.

 

“Yes, of course, but Jack –”

 

“ _Take me to bed_.  After.  The rest after.”

 

_Take you downstairs, shag the stuffing out of you, ride you, get you safe to shore somehow_ , Ianto thinks, pulling Jack roughly against his chest a moment.  _Tell me a story, tell me a fantasy, whatever it takes._   All he says aloud is, "Okay.  You're the boss. Okay."

 

\-------------

 

_I was married once.  Oh, right, I forgot you knew that already; you’ve seen the photos._

 

_She was a nurse in field hospital in the Great War.  Saw me come back to life after a gassing, so yeah, the cat was out of the bag from the start.  I think she’d seen weirder things during the course of the war; she was pretty hard to shock.  Just laughed and said if I was that sparky, I could probably do with a cup of tea.  Fell in love with her on the spot._

 

_Really feminine, she was, at least to look at, classic English rosebud coming into blossom.  This was before the flapper rage had all the women turning boyish – not that that wasn’t hot sometimes, too, but Adele, well, let’s say she had the attributes of a pre-war woman.  Looked insanely gorgeous in a corset, all that creamy flesh swelling above and below, and her hair loose over her shoulders.  And man, what she could do with her garters and stockings.  Didn’t have to teach her much on that score._

 

_God, I was so thrilled when she said yes.  She knew what she was getting into; she knew I’d come back, not like the other officers.  She didn’t know about Torchwood, though.  They needed me go back to the Continent when the flu epidemic hit – I died twice during that, wasn’t fun – so I wasn’t there when she…well._

 

_I don’t think I should have had to choose like that.  Maybe if Harriet had lived, it could have been different.  I always thought she understood a little better than Gerald did._

 

 

 

IV.

 

Later, Ianto will think of the Night of the Space Whale as a kind of watershed.  Oh, not in any Cosmo magazine, self-help kind of way; they’re chromosomally impaired by those standards, but still.  Something had clicked in place.

 

He’d only gotten a partial tale out of Jack and he hadn’t pushed it.  It was enough to know that Jack had good reason for finding their brand of light bondage a little distasteful these days, and enough to find a workaround that pleases them both.   Jack’s braces:  just sufficient restraint to be highly arousing, with a bit of wiggle room that creates its own possibilities.  Ianto’s more than satisfied with the results.

 

But that night also drew his attention, forcibly, to something he hadn’t quite been able to put words to before.  Something about Jack and his stories and the moments he chose to relate them, and the touching, and why it bothered him and didn’t, at the same time.

 

Tonight, Jack rubs Ianto back’s lightly as he launches into an improbable yarn about his stint as a harem guard in the Deneb system: a fox-in-the-henhouse scenario if ever there was one; a cover, he says, to let him get alongside a temporally displaced poet and diplomat who had somehow ended up as the Despot’s tenth wife.

 

“He thought she’d spend all her time between fucks composing odes to his dick or something.  What he didn’t know was that she was having it off with every woman, man and alien in the harem, just to spite him.  Well, my turn came around sooner rather than later, and he caught us _in flagrante_ – she was getting a little careless by then.  I’m balls-deep inside her, geez, what a grip she had, and there’s nothing for it but to pull out the weapon I kept where the sun don’t shine.  Nice little sonic item with a stun-gun feature – you’d have loved it – and I knock down the guards while she delivers hubby a good kick in the goolies, and we haul off to a little ship I’d marked out for a quick getaway.  Hoped she’d stick around for a bit; great moves she had, in every way -- but no, she wanted back to homeworld and wife, and no more sugar for me.  That’s gratitude for you.  But hey, win some, lose some.”

 

Jack finishes this tale with his usual grin, and the idle play of his hands becomes a prolonged, appreciative grope.  Ianto, unusually, doesn’t reply with either a squeal of protest or a countering move; he remains silent and still for so long that Jack plants his chin on Ianto’s chest and peers upward.  “Hey.  What is it?”

 

Ianto has to think very carefully before posing his question.  “Your stories,” he says at last.  “Why do you tell me stories in bed, Jack?  Or  -- why these stories?  They’re a little different from the ones you spin for public consumption.”

 

“Thought you liked my stories,” Jack says, hands still roving, but now getting his tongue into play, a few slow sweeps along the neck.  Ianto shivers, and tries to focus.

 

“I do.  They tell me a lot about you, actually, even when I think they’re complete bollocks. That’s not the point.”  He hesitates.  “Most of the time I don’t worry about it, you know.  I like who we are and what we do and there’s no call to dwell on things that we can’t change.  Even if it’s a little hard not to feel...insignificant sometimes, next to all you’ve done.  Or will do.”

 

“Insignificant,” Jack says, his hands now wandering southward with clear intent, “is hardly the word I’d choose for you.” 

 

There’s nothing else for it; Ianto uses his hard-won skills at leverage to flip Jack onto his back and to pin his hands at shoulder height.  “ _Jack_.  Pay attention to something besides my cock for five minutes,” and Jack sighs and sags.

 

“I like telling the stories.  They’re a big part of me, and I haven’t embroidered as much as you think.  I’d like you to know them.  Somebody should.”

 

“But you only tell me here,”  Ianto says, more gently.  “Because they’re not just stories about sex.  They’re not even about you, not in that lads-down-the-pub kind of way. They’re about having ….something.  Joy, maybe.  And losing it.  Over and over.  And the rest of the time, for some reason, you don’t want to remember.”

 

Jack doesn’t reply for a long time, which is an answer in itself.  His eyes are dark not with arousal but with something that Ianto has no name for.  But this is a reef that Ianto knows he has to navigate, or shipwreck trying.  He waits Jack out.

 

Finally – finally – Jack speaks, so low that Ianto has to lean close to catch the words.  “I don’t have any other way of holding on.  Not to any of it.  Not to any of _them_.”

 

Ianto smiles. 

 

He doesn’t know it, but this is the image that Jack will carry away from this moment;  his affection, the intimacy, the pride and even the mischief he brings to this bed, all vividly emblazoned in his face.  

 

“This may sound strange,” says Ianto.  “But I’d like you to promise me something.  Don’t worry,” he adds as Jack tenses under his hands.  “I think it’s a promise you can keep.”

 

\--------

 

After four years of Torchwood, Ianto has few articles of faith left, and almost all of them revolve around Jack in some way.  He firmly believes, for example, that Jack saved his life, in every way that it was salvageable, and that after Jack it won’t be his life in any way that matters.  Either he’ll have come to shore in the morgue – and that, likely enough, will be Jack’s doing too, in some measure – or he’ll have lost the memory of these years, and with them his hard-won sense of self.  Either way, Jack will be his thousand-and-first night, his final chapter.

 

Most would find that thought morbid.  Ianto doesn’t.  Because Jack is a story, too.   And Ianto and all the rest are, for now, a chapter, a night’s tale, but will dwindle to less than a comma – not even an eye’s blink between one word and the next, for anyone scanning the endless pages to come.  But Jack is also _their_ story, and through them, a larger story still.

 

The least sentimental of men, Ianto still believes that Jack will hold them close like this for as long as he can, and that they will work in him even longer.  He takes some degree of comfort in picturing Jack, anchored by touch in the _nows_ to come; in recognizing, in that infinite afterglow, the only forever that he himself will ever know.

 

_Used to work with this Welsh guy who made the best coffee I ever tasted.  Stupendous ass and these long, deft fingers -- always had a thing about hands.  Not your classic pretty boy, something a little home-grown about him, but jesus, he could wear a suit.  Liked to pretend he was a master tailor's son.  Guess he knew how sexy he was all buttoned down, but that's nothing to how he looked when the buttons came undone.  His voice was like that too -- sorta deadpan most of the time, cute accent, but when he got wound up it had this devastating edge, all husky. Devastating Deadpan.  Yeah, he'd like that._

 

_God, I was greedy.  Greedy for him, greedy for his loyalty, which, lemme tell you, wasn’t cheaply bought and damn well wasn’t blind.  Well, you know me.  I’m selfish, always have been.  I’d think of him as mine, but really? He was more and more his own man the longer I knew him. Didn’t let me get away with shit.  That’s something I’m pretty proud of, actually.  Maybe I helped that along a little._

 

_He’s the one…yeah, he’s the reason I’ve been telling you all this.  He asked me to.  Said that when I dropped safe anchor in the present – he meant like this, in bed, that was just his way of putting it – I should make a point of talking about who came before.  Do as much recollecting as I could, while I could.  And you know, it wasn’t even about him living forever in my memory or any such crap, he knew I couldn’t promise that, not really.  He just wanted me to remember all the times I’d been cared for.  Loved.  That I was worth it, even when I couldn’t promise anything.  When it all got to be too much._

 

_You don’t mind, do you?  Of course you don’t.  See, he got that.  Said the right ones would understand.  It’s not about comparisons.  What we have here and now—yeah, it’s precious, you know that.  All the more because I can remember when we’re like this.  I can remember and it…stops.  For a little while._

_I’m grateful for that.  So grateful._

 

_Give us a kiss, love._

 


End file.
